Posts Tagged "play"
Saying no, saying yes, and other stories
There’s not been much sleep in these parts lately. Have I mentioned that? You know, that I’m tired? No? Well, not for at least ten minutes anyway. Yes. Tired.
I have learnt that my ability to perceive myself as a good mother is directly proportionate to the amount of sleep I’m getting. Probably because my ability to BE a good mother is directly proportionate to the amount of sleep I’m getting. So, on both counts, I’ve been pretty crap this week.
Three or four hours of sleep a night and long days breeds a particularly snappy, shouty, emotionally fragile kind of mummy that neither me nor Kai are particularly keen on, and there has been a lot of snapping and shouting this week. Added to this, both of us have had to adjust to a new way of being around each other in the last few months. It’s just us now, you see, there’s no one else to help ease the tension. I am having to find ways of staying sane when your main source of company, and for long, solitary days and nights at a time, is two and half, and Kai is having to learn that I can’t provide the same focused attention available to him at the weekends, when he has an army playmates in the form of his Dad and family to help keep him occupied.
All of this is making for some particularly fraught weeks at the moment: lots of fallings-out, and the need for making-back-up-again. Good job we love each other, hey?
Motherhood has never come particularly naturally to me. I’m not that well suited to it, needing quiet and having a particularly fundamental need for my own space and to devote time and energy to my own projects and ideas. I have a tolerance level of about three seconds when it comes to the kind of involved, repetitive play that toddlers so enjoy, and Kai has especially intense needs in that department, being a child that never sits still, needing focused concentration to communicate with him and craving stimulation as desperately as I crave the peace to sit and snooze or read. I find I end up saying ‘no’ a lot: “no Kai, that’s enough now”, “no Kai, you’ll have to wait”, “no Kai, mummy’s busy”. We both end up frustrated and fraught, and I end up feeling guilty. It seems like he has the most fun when he’s away from me at the moment. I feel like dull mum, paling in comparison to the excitement and energy he gets from everyone else in his life. I’m not always sure what I’m really giving him most days, aside from fulfilling his basic needs.
But, BUT!
We’re getting there, on the good days at least, we really are. I’m learning to give a bit more, and Kai’s learning to take a bit less and somewhere in the middle we’re starting to find a better balance. I’m a great believer that it’s important for children to learn to play on their own, and NOT need an adult to direct them or play with them the whole time – it gives their imaginations a chance to be really unleashed without adult constraints. When I’ve had enough sleep to think about it properly, I realise that my ‘no’s don’t always have to be a source of guilt – I can view them as something really positive. And I’m learning to include him more – we’re becoming a little team, me and Kai. We clean together and cook together and wash up together and sort laundry together. When I have errands to run, we make it an adventure. Kai helps remember what we have to buy, where we’re going, and we don’t rush home, spending time dawdling along the pavement seeing what we can see.
What I’m learning is that saying no is okay, as long as they’re are plenty of ‘yes’s too. After a morning of ‘no’s after a long night of little sleep, I’m really trying to set aside some time to say “what do you want to do Kai?” and answering “YES!”. I’m finding that even if I’ve said no a hundred other times that day, it’s the yes’s that define what kind of day we have, even if it’s just the one. It’s giving us, in between the frustration and the fallings out, some real gems of time together.
Every day this week when I’ve asked him what he wants to do he’s signed the same sign: PAINTING! And so that’s what we’ve done. Lots and lots of it. I know I tend to harp on a bit about Kai and his art work, so forgive me my indulgence again. I guess when you have a child where so much is focused around what he’s NOT doing, it becomes extra-important to celebrate the things he DOES do. And this is something that makes Kai special in my eyes just now, not because of any particular extraordinary skill, (although I think for two and half he’s got quite an eye on him), but because it’s something that he enjoys so much, and which gives me so much joy to watch.
This week we’ve been using objects around the house to copy in our paintings, toys mostly, and he’s loved it. We talk about what colours things are, what shape, we mix our paints, I watch Kai daub and splat and dot, and for half an hour I get to feel like maybe I’m doing something right for once.
So here’s Kai’s painting of his toy Noah’s Ark, done all by himself while I did my knitting and we talked about what he was doing. I’m not a believer in the religious meaning, but we like stories, me and Kai, especially ones with animals in, and when you get to a paint a rainbow, and conjour up all the hope and light that that brings with it, well, I think it was just about perfect for us yesterday.
(P.S. The pants were clean, promise – had fallen out the laundry basket. Failed to spot them till after I’d saved the photo. Oh well, cheap thrill for you there. You’re welcome.)
Read MoreSo…emm… what am I supposed to be doing again?
It’s confession time here at SIFTW. Because I have a guilty secret to share…
I am a rubbish stay-at-home-mum.
This is not me saying that I’m a dreadful mother or anything (well, not VERY dreadful), it’s just that I don’t think this whole SAHM thing particularly suits me. Turns out I’m really not very good at it.
I was ok when Kai was tiny – being a mum then was mostly about keeping him alive and preventing him from drowning in the accumulated pile of his own vomit and poo. Simples. You put milk and food in one end, you clean up the other end, you sing lots of silly songs and pull funny faces and spend long hours just cuddling and cooing gobbledegook at each other. It was exhausting, but there was only a limited amount of potential for screwing up. It was kinda dull but it was a simpler, less complicated time.
These days? Man alive, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
Because these days I have a little person to look after. Who toddles and climbs and chatters earnestly and nonsensically during every waking moment. Who loves Matchbox cars and Thomas the Tank Engine (possibly more than he loves me), and does NOT like broccoli or soup or being asked to do something he doesn’t want to do.
This is a little person that copies, that is learning and changing at a rate of knots, and that has potential bursting out of orifice.
It is exciting and interesting and Kai seems to get more and more fricking adorable by the hour. But it scares the crap out of me.
Suddenly the potential for screwing up now seems lots, lots bigger. I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to DO with this little fierce ball of independent motion.
Am I supposed to be teaching him stuff??
Because here’s the other half of the confession and reason I’m a rubbish SAHM…
I’m not very good at playing.
I’m VERY good a cuddling, and tipping upside down, and playing hide-and-seek, and making Kai laugh until he cries and doing stories with silly voices, and helping him to get covered in food, and romping about in the sunshine, and eating cake together.
I am RUBBISH at structured play.
And the worst thing?
It bores me. Dreadfully.
I thought I would be great at playing. That I would have infinite energy AND WILLINGNESS to invest in making up exciting and educational games for Kai to partake in. But after 10 minutes of block building and car racing and colouring in I’m getting antsy. My lack of enthusiasm after a while must show as Kai usually quickly shuns me and my attention in favour of independent play, embarking on his complicated games of hiding cars under the sofa or trying to post things through the letter box. And I, relived, skulk off back to whatever project I have waiting for me and that I am currently obsessing over.
I do DO stuff with him. We go to at least one playgroup a week, meet up with friends, take lots of walks and trips to the park. We go to the Library (toy and regular) and the sensory room, and sometimes swimming if I can summon up the energy.
But at home? At home I suck.
And it worries me. Should I be doing more? Kai doesn’t know his colours and seems to think all animals go “mooo” or “woof” regardless of what they are. He gets confused between his knees and ears (although gets ‘willy’ right every time – go figure). He barely says any proper words at all.
I worry that that his education now in this kind of thing is down to me and that I am failing him. I feel like I should be taking more responsibility for his learning. I wonder whether he’d be better off at nursery but then hate the thought of it as I would miss him dreadfully.
Mostly I worry that I should WANT to do more ‘stuff’ with him, that I should be motivated and inspired to fill his days with learning and creativity and variation. That I should go to bed full of plans for what ‘enrichment activities’ I might do with Kai tomorrow and NOT my next writing project. That this SHOULD be enough for me.
The fact that it isn’t worries me most of all.
It is official. I am a SHIT stay-at-home-mum.
—————————————————————————
Amendment:
I have loved the comments on this post. Especially as they come from some of the mum’s I have THE most respect for. You tell me that I’m doing fine and I believe you. Thank you.
So I take it back. I am not shit. Because turns out I am just like you and I think you are AWESOME. So I guess that makes me? Well, not shit anyway.
Thanks. Thanks again. And thanks some more.
Is it stupid that I genuinely feel a huge deal better? Cause I really, really do.
x
Read More
Identity Crisis
Ok, so it’s a normal morning in our house. Kai and I are playing, making all the farm animals kiss each other and the little construction people (yes I know, condoning bestiality to a one year old, good god my immorality knows no bounds – there may even been some bull on bull kissing action going on). We then get bored of all the kissing and decide to do some jigsaws instead when suddenly I have a LIFE CHANGING REVELATION!!! Yes. For once the capital letters and multiple exclamation marks are justified… (as is the dramatic pause… have you noticed I tend to do them a lot too?)
You see I’ve always been under the impression that I was a bit of a free spirit. My house is cluttered in a kind of hippy disregard for authority (and Pledge) kind of way, my clothes rarely match. I quite often go the entire morning not knowing what I’m going to have for lunch until just before when I will impulsively throw something together and go A-HA! Pizza toast! My friends would probably describe me as creative and pretty random, and I have always been rather proud of that.
But no. My revelation this morning proves that all this is but a facade, an illusion, and that beneath it’s dippy, slightly unkempt exterior lies a deeper, darker side to myself. One I am not so proud of.
I like order. And rules. And boundaries. And safe, predictable things.
I know. Isn’t is awful??
Yes, I know there were clues. The pregnancy file and labour sign were probably two biggies. As is the fact that I frequently spend my evenings doing mathematics FOR FUN as a way of preparing for my degree in the autumn, and that I mark my own answers with large self-satisfying ticks while saying things like “algebra really is brilliant you know”.
And yet this morning still came as something to a surprise to me when my ability to embrace all things chaotic and random was tested and found severely wanting. Not only was a perturbed, I was positively DISTURBED.
By what? Well, by the following:
By all extents and purposes a harmless, fun jigsaw. But no. Look closer people.
First it lulls you in to a false sense of security. “Oooh shapes and colours” you say. “I understand. One of each shape and one of each colour. Just as it should be. Look Kai lets put the orange circle in the orange circle hole” (good pagan child that he is, the circle is his favourite).
Spurred on by the reassuring logic your brain keeps going. Shapes and colours, yep, and oh look! Animals and counting! Perfect!
Two cats, three zebra, four dogs, four rabbits….wait…that’s not right… we have two fours? And hold on a second, where’s one? Ok I’m feeling a little shaken but I’ll keep going.
And then five. Which cored me to my very marrow. Five…what the hell is this?? Five AMOEBA?
What kind of devil jigsaw is this????
Deep breaths Josie. It’s just a bit of a disordered jigsaw. And that’s ok. We like disorder!
NO WE DON’T!! WE HATE IT! I need to my child’s toys to be predictable and apply the rule of logic! Else where will it all end? Alphabet books that miss out the M and Q?? Madness!!
I’M SCARED KAI!! All my so righteously held convictions are crumbling around me!!
………..
Needless to say I’m ok now. Kai held my hand through my angst, we finished the jigsaw and put it away.
But I fear a part of me has been changed forever. The curtain to my soul has been tweeked aside and for a second I have seen the darkness within.
Perhaps this is only the beginning of a deeper corruption. Today crying over jigsaws, what about tomorrow? Ironing my jeans? Voting Conservative??
*sob*
WHO THE HELL AM I??
